Kept me entertained, but felt like sex without an orgasm. Left me cranky. Tnx a lot.

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2013)

ON THE PLUS SIDE:
1. great visuals and I must say that I absolutely LOVED the giant robots! All the details, all the enthusiasm that has been put into making them really does transpire into the screen;
2. very good acting for some of the cast members: Chalie Hunnam, who I felt gave a very honest and solid performance, proving to be a great lead character ;Idris Elba, with his unique scene presence and charisma; Ron Perlman, as always, added flavor to the whole experience-I would give them a 9 or 10 for their performances alone, if i could rank that separately
3. good entertainment, quite fun to watch overall
4. interesting concepts of "neural hand-shake" and compatibility; also interesting idea about the Kaiju being sea-creatures as opposed to coming from the skies;
ON THE MINUS SIDE:
1. weak story, LOUSY SCRIPT, really seemed like the focus of the movie was the design of the monsters and the robots, and the cool CGI effects, and the rest(what one would call "the actual script") was just there as a mandatory introduction to the action scenes
2. very ONE DIMENSIONAL characters! (Charlie Hunnam's character was just some dude who lost his brother; Rinko Kikuchi's Mako Mori was just some girl who had been traumatized by the kaijus; etc etc etc)
3. NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, no real connections
4. very bad acting from some of the cast members, and I am specifically disappointed in RINKO KIKUCHI'S ACTING, she was all over the place. In one scene she acts like this stupid little girl who HIDES in shame!! like a silly teenager for being caught glancing at Hunnam's character while he was changing his t-shirt!?! WTF?? Isn't this a girl who was supposed to have been raised amongst men and soldiers, isn't she supposed to be a tough girl, a pilot, a warrior? Well, in the next scene she actually IS Xena, the warrior princess, as she beats the s**T out of Hunnam while mocking him, in training. And then she acts again like a frightened, stupid, disabled, mentally challenged little girl in ALL the other scenes, I mean COME ON, make up your mind! Who are you gonna be? A little consistency, please! It's just not believable, that's all...And it's not about "being complex" or having "nuanced personality traits", it's just about not knowing how to play the character(in my opinion, at least).
I also thought the scientists were over played, seemed stupidly unfunny to me at times.
5. this movie is a collection of clichés, from start to finish, there is almost nothing original in the story, nothing that you haven't seen 100 times before plot wise(except what i mentioned in the plus side section of the review).
6.and maybe the most ANNOYING thing for me was the fact that there was NO SENSE OF FINALITY to a world supposedly in the BRINK OF EXTINTION. It lacks a certain air of DOOM, DISPAIR AND HUMAN SUFFERING. Also, I didn't felt any human connections or some great sense of camaraderie. Everyone was "meah, we lost a crew but we don't have the time to feel sorry for them...maybe later". I mean c'mon!!
7.The whole love story seemed highly unlikely and very, very, VERY! badly written, also no chemistry between Hunnam and Kikuchi. When did the "feelings" between those 2 developed anyway? Did they show that while I was dozing?? Was it "love at first..neural connection"?
8. Speakig of the neural hand-shake..Why, in the world, would you need to shout orders and indications at someone WHILE YOU ARE IN THEIR BRAIN?? I could understand it if speaking, shouting, screaming came instinctively, like a reflex, like screaming when you get bitten by something, but giving fairly calm indications, making suggestions WHILE YOU INHABIT the other person's BRAIN?!? I'm just sayin'...
And I could go on, and on, and on...
I gave it a 6 for the CGI and most of the acting, and for being entertained. Buttttt, like I said in the summary, left me...not satisfied. And thus, a little cranky.